


All Across the Sands (Bones of an Impressive Romance Mix)

by littledust



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-16
Updated: 2010-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-09 12:18:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/pseuds/littledust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time travelers are used to nonlinear love affairs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Across the Sands (Bones of an Impressive Romance Mix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magicallaw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicallaw/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Scattered all Across the Sands](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/797) by magicallaw. 



> Written for Remix... Redux 8.

It's been six months (twenty-four hours) since she last had coffee.

Martha cradles the mug in her hands, letting its warmth seep into her hands. It's her favorite mug, the one her sister painted to say _#1 Doctor_ in obnoxious neon pink. The last time she saw it was a year and three days (twenty-four hours) ago, freshly washed and placed on a shelf. The second "o" in "Doctor" is chipping. She takes another sip of coffee, savoring the normalcy more than the flavor. She's had a long time to forget how to coax decent coffee out of her ill-tempered machine.

Someone a few floors down joins the radio in an off-key rendition of "Here Comes the Sun." The early morning sunlight is watery, but it's enough to make London shine. The old city looks (and sounds) brand new, snapped back down the rubber band of time to its familiar humming self. Martha stares out her window as her coffee grows cold. Her heart's in several places and several pieces, but most of it's made it to here, to now.

*

The kettle whistles and Rose mutters something uncomplimentary at it. Somehow she's traded school hours for even earlier hours as a shopgirl, and she's not enjoying a bit of it. She bangs around in the cupboards looking for the sugar before realizing that her mum doesn't have to be up for another hour at least. Rose gives up on a satisfying start to the morning and takes her tea straight, gulping down frantic too-hot mouthfuls because she's run out of time. She leaves her cup unwashed in the sink.

It's early enough that the last few partygoers are stumbling home, their faces a mess of eyeliner and giggles. Rose starts to smile back but then remembers that she's working on a bloody Saturday, so that bit of cheer's right out the window. A girl jogs by, ponytail bobbing to the rhythm of the natural early riser. Rose steps onto the bus and rests her head against a pole, the metal cool against the headache just waiting to burst forth. She can predict exactly how her day is going to go, from Derek's babbling thanks that someone else is here early for inventory, to the late-night telly she and her mum always get sucked into. The ordinariness of it all weighs on her shoulders.

Rose wonders if anyone else feels as stuck as she does, or if she's alone in the universe.

*

When Martha and her siblings were small, they played Ring a Ring o' Roses, spinning each other round and round. Later on, she came across the lyrics in a biology textbook, a cultural footnote explaining their relation to the plague. The dry, clinical writing did not answer why anyone would be so mad as to make a song out of death.

Martha can't help thinking _We all fall down_ as she walks through the ashes of Tokyo. The grief of the few survivors is raw and horrible, almost too much for even her to bear, and she's seen so much death and destruction already. Martha walks faster, keeping pace with the relentless rhythm inside her head, _We all fall down we all fall down we all--_ She catches herself and lets out a sob, one more explosion in the still air. This is the way to madness: a melody stuck in your mind, a throb in your head to replace the beat of your heart. Martha whispers a name for a prayer but the sky is indifferent, obscured. Still, she has another hope to cling to, another name for the stars, and she speaks this one in full volume as she closes her eyes.

When she opens them, before her stands a girl. _The_ girl.

"How d'you know my name?" Rose asks, looking so young that Martha's heart aches. She looks around, taking in the ashy streets and ruined buildings. "Is this the end of the world again?"

"This is a future that shouldn't be," Martha answers. Corrects herself: "This is a future that _won't_ be, not when I'm done with it."

Hope blossoms on Rose's face. "Are you a Time Lord? Do you know the Doctor? He's so scared of being alone--"

Time cuts her off in midsentence, jerking her back to whenever she's supposed to be. Martha bows her head for a moment. The nursery rhyme is no longer circling its relentless way through her head, but it's been replaced by her unspoken reply to Rose: _I'm just Martha Jones._ Somehow, it has to be enough.

Martha squares her shoulders and soldiers on.

It's the last time she'll ever see Rose.

*

Rose wakes from a nightmare into another one. She chokes in the dark, remembering the metallic murder in the last Dalek's voice and the terrifying rage in the Doctor's. There are screams outside and she curls in on herself, certain that the war is on again, the Time War or World War II or some horror she hasn't yet named. There are tears on her cheeks.

The screaming stops, and Rose hears someone else in the tiny room weeping. She sits up cautiously, but the cot creaks.

All at once there is a gun pressed to her forehead, and the pitiful figure on the other side of the room resolves itself into the woman who might be a Time Lord but probably isn't, which is a long title for someone, but Rose hasn't been able to think of a better one. "Hang on, I've met you before--" Rose says.

The gun lowers and Rose tries to remember how to breathe. "Rose Tyler," the woman says, and sits next to her on the cot. "You picked a hell of a time to pop up again."

"This is still the future that isn't," Rose whispers, and wants to cry again. She prides herself on taking all these strange adventures in stride, but she's exhausted and people were just _screaming,_ screaming like all the monsters in the world were after them. Plus it's one thing to travel in time on the TARDIS, and quite another to be jerked back and forth between times and places.

Then she thinks of the woman who has to live in this screaming world and feels ashamed of herself. Rose puts an arm around her and leans her head on the woman's shoulder, operating on instinct. "Never did get your name last time round."

"Martha Jones." Martha relaxes into the embrace like she hasn't slept in weeks, and lets out a quiet laugh. "If you've met me before, it means I live to fight another day. You're always going forward in your time and back in mine." Her voice is so weary, like she hadn't dared to hope that she would make it. Rose decides not to tell her that whatever battle Martha's fighting, it was still raging last time she saw her. No, let her have some comfort.

"You'll live," she promises. "Just this once, everybody lives."

Rose holds Martha until the sun shines through a crack in the wall, and then she's back in the TARDIS with empty arms.

*

Six weeks trapped in 1969 has Martha thinking up ways to avoid the Doctor just so she doesn't sock him in the jaw. She has the feeling he's a bit sick of her too after so much time in such close quarters, so she wanders about the TARDIS uninterrupted. She considers taking a dip in the swimming pool but decides to press on to strange new rooms, rounding a corner only to find herself at a dead end.

"Are you hiding from the Doctor, too?" someone asks.

Martha whirls around, heart jackhammering, and sees the face from the Doctor's journal, the face she's memorized in spite of herself. "How--how long have you been hiding?" she demands, a thousand emotions crossing her mind all at once.

The girl who can only be Rose Tyler frowns, brow creasing, and then after a moment her face lights with sudden understanding. "This is the first time we meet," she says softly, reverently. "You and me, we're going backwards and forwards on each other. The last time, I wished so much I could stay--" Here Rose bites her lip as if she's said too much, or still not enough.

The silence stretches on too long after that, so finally Martha breaks it by asking, "Why are you hiding from the Doctor?"

Rose shrugs, attempting nonchalance. "We're traveling with somebody else at the mo. Think the Doctor's a bit taken with him, truth be told." Then she giggles. "Well, I'm a bit taken with him, too, but it's all so complicated. Oh! The name's Rose Tyler, by the way."

Martha nods in response to the introduction, laughing ruefully at the rest. She likes this girl in spite of herself: likes her smile, likes her laugh, likes her spirit. Likes her much more than idealized ink upon a page.

Rose is staring at her with an odd look on her face. "D'you think," she starts, and stops herself again, but this time Martha wants her to finish.

"Do I think what?"

"You were so brave last time I saw you," Rose says. "So brave, and so lonely, and I just wanted to--"

And then Rose kisses her, soft and tasting of strawberry lip gloss. Martha closes her eyes, but the moment is over all too soon. She's not quite sure it even happened. She starts to protest, her quiet noise of regret too loud in the still corridor, but then she realizes that Rose is gone, vanished off into her own time.

"Be seeing you again, then," she says aloud, and smiles.


End file.
